Service providers such as banks and other financial institutions typically provide self-service financial transaction devices (SSFTDs) such as automated teller machines (ATMs) for use by their customers. While the SSFTDs provide a useful service to the customers, there is a significant burden imposed on the service provider to maintain and upgrade the SSFTDs. This burden becomes nearly overwhelming in the case of large institutions, which may have thousands upon thousands of SSFTDs distributed across thousands of miles.
When periodically upgrading the software on the SSFTDs, the service provider may often need to upgrade all of the SSFTDs within a short window of time, so that, for instance, all of the SSFTDs provide a consistent user experience. The SSFTDs are commonly interconnected by a network, however providing upgraded software to all of the SSFTDs over the network may not be practical or economical due to typical network bandwidth limitations.
Even if a software upgrade is eventually provided to the SSFTD, the upgrade usually involves a complex installation sequence, performed locally at the SSFTD, which is prone to error and therefore not reliably repeatable over a large number of machines. Potential errors are even more likely where a human service operator is involved in locally managing the installation sequence at a given SSFTD.